I just came from seeing the new romantic comedy, Jumping the Broom. As a lover of Romantic Comedies, I liked the film, and actually had been looking forward to seeing it since some of the trailers sometime earlier in the year emerged. I like Paula Patton (I thought she was comedy in “Just Wright”) and of course, I adore Angela Basset (I mean, who doesn’t?), Loretta Devine and the comedic styling’s of Tasha Smith. I don’t really have any feelings for or against Mike Epps or Laz Alonzo (who is positioned to be the next Morris Chestnut, but who is also not my type. meh.) The rest of the cast is just amazing and lovely to look at, and with the good costuming, great scenery and lighting, and eye candy wise, good stuff. (Pooch Hall, Gary Dourdan (woof), and of course the amazingly hot Meagan Goode.)

The plot is simple Romantic Comedy fodder, girl meets boy, they fall in love, 6 months later they are planning a wedding and the mother of the groom hates the new bride = hilarity and evilness ensue.

The class issues that everyone keeps mentioning that are the basic conflict in the film are definitely there. After watching it, I discussed the film with my girl who I went with. She mentioned that yes, we expected caricatures, (we aren’t expecting depth, its a RomCom!) but it was interesting that there really was such a heavy handed theme of ‘questioning the blackness’ of educated, wealthy black people that both of us noticed, and didn’t like. I added that the reveal of a family secret in the film is what ‘brings them down to the level’ of the working class black people in the film, so they are able to see that they are ‘not so different after all’. awwww.

I enjoyed Loretta Devine’s character transformation over the film, and Mike Epps was clearly there for comedic relief, because the film really could have worked without him, and pushed it more toward a drama, but I know Hollywood ain’t ready for critical or black drama with character depth. (deep sigh). I could have done without the TD Jakes cameo or the ‘way to easily’ wrapped up ending.

But again… I’m there for the love and the romance. One of my favorite parts in the film was the relationship between the Angela Basset character and her husband, the sexy Brian Stokes Mitchell. I liked the depth of their relationship and how it was a great representative of black love, forgiveness and partnered commitment on screen. I also adored the opening sequence of the film that showed black and white photos of black weddings since what looked like the advent of photography in the early 1900’s.

Overall, I want to encourage folks who love “Rom-Com’s” to see and support the film. It’s about 20K times better than “Something Borrowed”, which I also saw this past week. (I’m outing myself, but I read the book during a forced self care time away from cultural theory. I like the book, but do not like the film, at all really. Meh. But that, is another blog post). Let me also be clear that I’m writing this first part of the review from that genre’d perspective. The deeper analysis is below.

So, In a world full of Tyler Perry films as offerings to those of us who want and need a romance flick with an all black cast, without someone bursting into gospel music or being overly heavy handed on the Christian themes, this film definitely filled that happy, hetero, escapist, fun space for me.

Go see it!!

Down to business: THIS NEXT PART CONTAINS MAJOR FILM SPOILERS. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM AND ARE PLANNING TO DO SO. THIS WILL RUIN THE FILM FOR YOU.

I actually didn’t know that there was a family secret that was going to be revealed during the film. I was completely thrown off sitting in the theater when suddenly, the two sisters, mother of the bride, Angela Basset’s character and auntie of the bride, Valarie Pettiford’s character (whom I love from “Half and Half”) are fighting about the fact that Valarie gave Angela her little girl when she got pregnant as a young woman in Paris, and Angela and Brian raised Paula as their daughter.

What? Really? I’m sitting inside a theater watching an escapist film that is unknowingly about adoption? Of COURSE it is!! gah!

Okay, okay. deep breaths. This film is loaded with themes of same race and kinship adoption in the African American / Black community. First, a disclaimer, I just came from the film, so I haven’t had time to think about these things in a deep theoretical way, this is a blog posting and is just me writing some thoughts down, introducing some issues connected to adoption that I hope to put up for discussion, but also because I plan to explore them deeper at a later time.

Onward: I have to say that Loretta Devine does an amazing job of making me hate her in the film. From her irrational dislike of the bride and the brides family, to her crazy selfish and absolutely horrible, just… mean –lashing out when she reveals that she has overheard the fight between Angela and Valarie, and that, whoops, Paula – you need to check yourself honey, because these people who you think are your parents, don’t even love you enough to tell you that you aren’t their kid!

Ouch. That shit was cold, Loretta, cold.

But what is important about this moment, the moment she lashes out and actually does turn Paula’s life upside down, is the way that things unfold and how the themes of adoption, secrecy and notions about shame and the Black family play out in the storyline.

One of the more powerful issues for me is that aunties, grandmothers, uncles raising other family member’s children, happens ALL the time in our families and in our communities, but nobody connects them to adoption. Further, no one connects the secrecy and shaming aspect of unwed parents to the overall historical discourses of adoption, reproductive justice, family and who is and who isn’t an ‘appropriate’ black parent. This is the kind of discourse that continues to impact our notions of what is and isn’t neglect, and moments like this in Jumping the Broom offer an opportunity to either uphold or push back against a society that relies on a social welfare system that was set up not to support black mothers and fathers, wed or not.

The model of ‘keeping it in the family’, is an adoption model I prefer over a model that doesn’t put family preservation first, and as we know, the keeping it in the family model has deep connections to the history of slavery in the African Diaspora and models of family outside western colonial ideology. For hundreds of years black families both domestically and internationally have been taking care of our own children, even as over and over colonization and the social welfare system continues to attempt to take them from us. Yes, to take them from us for white desires, (historically, for more slaves or, contemporarily, trafficked for adoption or to fulfill infertility or ‘savior’ desires.). But I digress. (do I?)

The way that Paula’s birth mother, Valarie, is shamed over and over by her sister, Angela’s character (adoptive mother) to keep quiet about telling Paula the truth of her heritage is totally driven by Angela’s fear of losing a connection with her daughter, and somehow of Valarie taking ‘her rightful place’ as Paula’s ‘one and only’ mother.

I understand perfectly that the reveal of adoption / parentage was a script device that put an obstacle in front of the bride and groom to overcome, but its clear to me, that the script writers have no clue as to how life changing, and how much being adopted in general, (let alone the ‘late reveal’ that seems to be a common pattern in same race adoptions) has a life long, major impact on our lives as adopted people.

These are people she is supposed to trust? I have heard stories over and over from same race adoptees (White, Black, Asian) whose parents kept the fact that they were adopted a secret, when there were people in the family who actually knew, and either kept the secret from them, or assumed that the adoptee knew and that the family just never talked about it, or that it was private. These same families have a moment like the moment in the film, where a cousin or someone outside the family reveals to the adoptee (child or adult) that they are adopted. Do people think that these moments aren’t life changing? Or that the solid ground beneath your feet when you are told something that changes who you are forever doesn’t earthquake and have everlasting tremors on your body and heart?

What about having adoption NOT be a secret? What about Angela and Valarie’s characters working together over a lifetime to ensure that Paula does indeed feel loved and secure, by never keeping her adoption a secret, by embracing the fact that her family is so loving and caring that they support one another by parenting collectively. What about Valarie or Angela and Brian as a couple, explaining to Paula from birth, year after year, whenever she has questions about her mother or her situation, but always, always being truthful and supporting her through the complicated nuances of the circumstances.

The model of ‘ownership’ adoption, connected to the nuclear family is the model that is portrayed in this film. There is no room for an extended family where mother and father roles are blurred, where the entire family takes on the parenting of a child. The non nuclear model is unable to exist in this film. I saw in Angela’s character the very real fears of dis-attachment that I see in adoptive mothers who choose to adopt internationally instead of domestically, because they are afraid one day the child will leave them, or that the mother will come searching for her child and take them away. Uh, if you lie to your child, or hide their history, or are afraid of how they are different from you so you deny it, what, I ask you, can you expect? Why not believe in love enough to know that your child understands that what you are doing is loving them enough to let them have love from multiple places in their life?

What about a world where Paula’s character is respected and not left unprepared for such a moment of reveal, pain, distrust and for her entire life as she knows it shifting under her feet?

and… Really? One conversation of explanation with her birth mother after the reveal is enough to get her back on track to the wedding? Her father isn’t even her father! Who is her father? Where is he? What does he look like? Paula’s character has half siblings and a whole other family to consider now. but of course, the film doesn’t go there. Why would it?

During the moment when Valarie’s character is sitting with Paula after the reveal, telling her, “I’m glad I gave you to (Angela), she could give you so many things that I wasn’t able to give you”, my stomach had a moment where I flashed back to hearing my own birth mother on the phone. She told me that she asked for me to go to a white family, and she was so proud of her decision, because look how I turned out. What? Ok, I get it, you need to tell yourself that to cope with the situation as it stands but realistically, you gets no props for how I turned out. That’s ALL my moms and pops. But then, is that an argument for the fact that she was right? That she should have done what she did? I’m not sure, but my circumstances aren’t like Paula’s character, no one could hide the fact that I was adopted from me, I’m black, my family is white, its not a secret.

Ugh. But backing away from the personal, I had an extremely hard time with the ways in which the depth of adoption and disconnection from roots was swept away in the film. I’m sorry, but Loretta’s character would have been kicked the hell out my house. I’m not saying that the messages of forgiveness, or moving on, or even the one about family accepting each other regardless of all our faults are bad ones. I’m saying adoption is a lifelong issue. I’m saying that an adopted person, even if they are a kinship adopted person, deserves to know who their parents are and that they deserve the respect of knowing upfront, their entire lives, so these moments of emotional devastation don’t happen. I don’t think that people who aren’t adopted actually understand how important knowing your heritage is.

I’m still pushing against the narrative of gratefulness that tells adoptees they had better be grateful for our lives, because ‘it could have been so much worse’. I’m looking for a black community and a larger world that wants to embrace unwed parents who need support to keep their children, instead of stigmatize them and make them feel ashamed.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you all think and in the meantime, I’m gonna go see Thor. There better not be one dang thing about adoption in that film or I’m cracking skulls!

Yesterday morning I got a call from CNN to participate in a panel commenting on transracial adoption, race and of course, Sandra Bullock. As a rule, I stay out of conversations that center around celebrities or that would seem to be looking at or critiquing one person’s life personally. However, they ensured me I wouldn’t be commenting about her directly, but was asked to come on as a scholar to comment on the overall climate in the web/ blogisphere. Supposedly everyone is all a ‘twitter’ and blogs are blowing up with comments from everyone who has something to say about her adoption of a black child. I had no idea people would care so much and also chose not to even really read anything around it, do you know why? For many of us scholars who are adoptees / fostercare alumni, the questions that are raised by SB adoption, and that were asked in this interview / panel were the same questions people have been asking over and over since transracial adoption became more of a public issue politically and racially during the 50’s when the Korean War adoptions began and the 1970’s when the Vietnamese Baby Lifts happened. So for us, So Sandra Bullock is like one tiny bump in a long history of black and brown children being adopted by white families. The issues remain the same except now we have moved to a place where we aren’t only concerned with domestic adoption but with the connections between child exploitation, paper orphaning, continued resistance to family preservation, devaluation of families of color and the entire economic market of children of color that continues to exploit unwed mothers who if they had the economic means, societal approval and support, would otherwise keep their children. So regarding Sandra, its not really about her or her choices. Its unfortunate they have to be all over the media, but for us, its about an entire history and continue replication of a specific narrative around adoption and race and one that usually never includes adult adoptee researchers. So first, I have to hand it to CNN for taking the leap on putting someone, specifically an adoptee, who is a researcher and scholar on adoption issues who actually knows what they are talking about on their programming. So. . . back to me.🙂 Personally, the whole day was super surreal, but I had a great time. I had my first ‘superstar’ moment when CNN ‘sent a car’ to pick me up. I actually found this incredibly important because everything happened so quickly, I really needed the time from my house to the studio in SF to go over notes, focus and stop giggling with excitement with my other AFAAD board member, Lisa Walker, who went with me for moral and technical support.

Talk back: First, I couldn’t see either Don or Wendy in while I was set up in the satellite room, so I had no idea what Wendy looked like. I don’t have cable, so I don’t even watch CNN, so I had no sense of what they were putting on screen while any of us were talking. Overall, I’m pleased with how it went down, I was nervous but it felt great when I was done. yay! For the most part, I will let the video speak for itself. My only overall comment is that I think its incredibly important for us to recognize the distinctions between mixed race biological children who are raised by a white parent and transracially adopted children of color raised in white families. As much as adoptive parents want to act like race doesn’t matter, sometimes they want to forget that adoption matters just as much. Certainly for the mixed race person or adoptee, issues of struggling with the whiteness of your parent, the privilege of your parent who doesn’t want to recognize you as a person of color is similar. But what people forget is how the negotiation of two family histories is always part of the adoptee history, whether or not that adoptee acknowledges it or not or has the support from their family to explore issues what it might be like to think about a connection to a birth family and how that connection changes the parent – child relationship. (its not a good or bad change, its just a shift thats important to recognize.) In other words, a mixed race person with a white mother IS connected to that mother in a way where they can see their origins, their heritage, their family history as DIRECTLY connected to them. In a TRA family where the parent or parents are white, that connection is NOT there. Its there because of shared memories, its there because of a shared history since the adoptive relationship began, but not because the adoptee can look at the family and say, oh, i look like Aunt Edna, my nose is my mothers, I look like my brother, or I understand how great grandpa came over on the Mayflower and that’s a part of me. For and adoptee, that part is missing. There is no mirror of recognition in the faces of our families, or a history that spans back generation. Imagine how powerful it was for me to find out after 40 years that on the Filipino side of my family my grandfather came from the Philippines to work in the fields in Hawaii, and how amazing it was to find out that on my Black side of the family had a few active Black Panthers. Two tiny details that have given a kind of grounding to place my feet in. I am from somewhere. Finally, I’m concerned about Ms. Walsh’s comment regarding her and her daughters being a ‘welcome racial curiosity’. Its this kind of language that forces me to remind parents of children of color that what is cool for you, is certainly NOT always cool for your kids. You may get off walking down the street with your beautiful exotic mixed race kid, who gets stares and comments. But how exactly do you think your child feels about being on display, about being stared at, about having people think that you dont really belong to your family. This is where the connection between mixed race children and adoptees DOES cross. Its not either or. Try to hold both at the same time folks. Please comment and share. I’d love to get your thoughts on Don, Wendy and I. Lets talk folks! What a great day. oh and to my OAKLAND folks. dudes, I’m SOOORRRY okay? I was looking at the reflection of myself in the screen with the picture of the GG Bridge behind me and SF just came out, I love and REP Oakland folks!! lol!

I know black people are never surprised when white people, ‘show they ass’, and I’m no different, especially having grown up around em, but I have to say I’m deeply disgusted with John Mayer.

I’m not even gonna lie. I love his music. I’ve defended him as a musician to a whole bunch of folks. I love his artistry, his guitar ‘gear-head’ sensibility and his apparent attention to and respect for the historical greats in blues music that his music is totally predicated upon. He’s never hidden the fact that he knows where the music he plays comes from and who his influences are – all black men.’

I’m not gonna repeat for you what he said, because you can read it anywhere.

Basically what this shameful display points out for me is the unfortunate and sad reality of white privilege and white supremacy. This, like Michael Richards, is a stark and strong reminder of no matter who the white person is, no matter if they are close to, work with, love, are in a relationship with, or adopt a black person, they have to be on a constant job, and always aware of how their whiteness is like a veil, no, a cloak that covers them from their ability to see the world and their position in it.

Two other thoughtful posts on the JM debacle that point out JM’s racism, misogyny and homophobia:

And for me, (no surprise here, dude its an adoptee blog!) this incident is completely and utterly related to transracial adoption (and interracial relationships I might add). and I immediately thought of the multiple times in my life that the white people who were close to me, not just my family, people who I thought were friends, both girls and boys at one point or another when ‘the shit got real’ around race, revealed themselves to be racist, and basically betrayed me and our friendship or relationship.

It is completely possible for white people to love and respect black people and still say and do racist shit toward them. Its called white privilege for a reason! I’m not calling anyone out, but my brutha’s & sista’s who are in interracial relationships, don’t act like this doesn’t come up for you. Adoptee’s with white parents have it happen ALL the time. Even if their parent has been for years and years engaged in anti-racist struggles, there have been more times than not, that they trip up and do some racist mess and totally hurt, disrespect or devalue their child and their child’s culture. I can point out so many instances right now, in my work educating and working with AP’s, even one’s who think they ‘get it’, where they continue to display their internal and ingrained ideologies about race and blackness.

For me, it’s about protection, what is or isn’t my ally, my parent, my teacher, my friend doing to protect and assist me in fighting and coping with the constant barrage of racism that exists outside in the world? Now I’m not arguing that John Mayer is an active anti-racist ally, what I’m arguing is that the cloak of white privilege sometimes is so thick, you are completely covered with it, and you get comfortable and forget that you always, your entire life, have to be on guard with the ways you are fighting back. JM got comfortable with his relationship to blackness, and forgot that he was white. I’m totally irritated too, because much like most white celebrities who ‘make mistakes’, this fool will be forgiven and back in action like he didnt say anything. Unlike Isaiah Washington, who displayed his homophobia, he apologized and Hollywood has basically blackballed him. Will he be forgiven? Will he be given a pass for just, ‘making a mistake’ and given an opportunity to rectify his mistake? I doubt it.

The only thing I have to say about his video apology last night, is why did he feel the need to thank his band for coming on stage and playing with him? He’s thankin the negro band like he’s not paying they rent. You know what, John? Black folks have been workin for and with racist white folks forever.

My dear friend and fellow AFAAD Board member Karie Gaska, who is in ATL now for her Ph.D. and who is also a fan of JM, and I had a conversation today about his interview. Here’s what Karie had to say:

“I think the other bloggers LM mentioned above did a good job of pointing out all of the racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc in John’s comments so I wont pick it apart again. I’m moving from the understanding that this interview reveals underlying, latent racist, sexist, homophobic thoughts and am just sharing what I think we have to contribute to this incident as TRA’s who live in that place where we may really really love people who really really disappoint us in terms of understanding racism and validating our experiences.

I’m not as deeply disappointed in John Mayer in particular as much as I’m just sad and disappointed in what this represents. I don’t think that John Mayer’s comments are any different from what millions of other people think, he just happens to be famous so its easy to call him out on it. But this definitely has parallels to the transracial adoption experience for me. As a TRA who grew up around all white people, this reminds me of that day when you confront the reality that maybe all the people around you are really racist and talk about you behind your back (or in many cases in front of your back). Then you swear off white people and their racist attitudes for a while, only to be brought back and hold on to the hope that maybe you were wrong…. maybe all white people aren’t racist? Maybe you can have white friends and not tensely wait in fear for them to say something ignorant that makes you cringe and then find yourself not returning their phone calls. Then something like this happens and you remember….”oh yeah they really all are racist”. Not because they actively want to be racist, but just because we live in a racist society. If you are a white person and just live your life in America, you will live, breathe, and absorb all sorts of overt, covert, implicit and every other kind of racist, sexist, homophobic stuff. And if you never stop and examine your values, your life, or your thinking, you will just go along regurgitating it. So this just reminds me that America is a racist society and white privilege is powerfully alive yet seldom acknowledged. And too often it can be commonplace for someone to have a blatant disregard for others humanity and totally not see it. It happens everyday.

As a TRA growing up I faced this on an interpersonal level and I still see it with white adoptive parents today. A lot has changed but you know a lot has stayed the same. The John Mayer incident reminds me of how you can align yourself with Black people to the extent that it benefits you but divorce yourself from the part you don’t like. Like when JT exposed Janet’s boob at the superbowl. He can be involved, apologize and still go to the grammy’s but Janet is the “black whore”, “jezebel”, etc who is oversexed and must be stopped! The shit is ridiculous. and I’m not mad at JT…I’m just sayin that’s how it works. Align yourself with the Black people as much as it benefits you but then when shit gets real….where are you? That is white privilege…because you can do that…you have the option to divorce yourself from it. And I see white parents do that all the time. Align themselves with the struggle…enough to want to adopt a child, but not enough to help a family work toward reunification. Align themselves enough to move to a more diverse neighborhood, but not enough to change their own social circle.

And his comments resurfaced one particular memory for me that I’ll just give as an example of how white people think they are not racist (or insert another ism), but clearly prove their racism…. in their demonstration of their “non-racism”. When I was about 14 the same kind of incident that John was talking about with Perez Hilton happened with me. I was hanging out somewhere and there was a white-dude in another conversation near me talking about how he wasn’t a racist to another white dude. And then he randomly kisses me to “prove” his non-racism. And I remember how that felt…like I was a piece of meat, or an animal, or a joke, not a person. So you can just kiss someone and violate their physical space without permission and that proves you are not racist? No dumbass that proves you ARE racist. In the same way that John Mayer kissed perez hilton violated his space, and had no regard for him as a person…only as a joke…and then he used the word “fags” DUH! You are homophobic buddy! And the whole interview he is trying to counter the popular belief that he is a douchebag….ironic?

Anyway thats enuf rambling, the whole thing just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth…. “
final word from LM:

When Karie and I were chatting about this and she recounted her story of the white-dude above, it also flashed me back to remembering hatred from white men and boys around me as a child, and the sexualized way it played out then. White boys in my school and church community would always deny publicly that they found anything about me attractive, and at the same time would express their repulsion/attraction to me in mostly sexually violent ways when they knew they wouldn’t get caught. It also worked in the reverse, a white boy would say they liked me, but then once other friends found out, he would reject me publicly an the verbal part of the rejection was always about me being a black girl.

(I cant help but think about this new group of young women coming up right now in all white communities.. sigh).

I cant even begin to talk about how angry I am over the Kerry Washington and “i dont date black girls” = “david duke penis” thing and how that relates to the continued devaluation of black women as desirable. What you can steal black music but you cant fuck a black woman? Oh right, you can fuck em, you just cant tell anyone. I can’t wait until there is a black girl who comes out sayin she slept with JM.

So John Mayer, I’m officially over it. and I’m pissed I have to make a decision about what to do with my albums, like I had to do with Chris Brown.

Im working on developing a new workshop on race that I hope will address partially the ways racism tries to hide itself inside the new liberal white person. Its always interesting to me how work that is done in the Black community becomes co-opted into the discourse of whiteness and then becomes meaningless. Like “diversity”, “political correctness” and most recently, “anti-racist”. I got into this great discussion with Chris over at Race has nothing to do with you and our other friend, Jordan – about why the term “ally” and the term “anti-racist” have now become problematic. As Jordan put it, “I’m ‘pro-life’ for sure, but I’m sure as hell not puttin that button on my backpack. ” What he means here of course is that he is against war, death and destruction – and for the right of women to choose, so the meaning of ‘pro-life’ becomes lost, co-opted by conservatives and useless to us.

Discussion point – I’m really interested in what your definition of “anti-racist” is. Can we chat about this for a bit?
My colleague and friend Kamau Bell in his new show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve – talks about this new phenomenon of white celebrities coming out the mouth with racism, and then (semi)apologizing for it, before they walk outside and do it again. Bell questions how is that white liberals who claim to be ‘our friends’, think that simply because they say, “I’m not racist”. This phrase, along with “Ive got tons of black friends” is a shield to hide the lack of internal work on how race functions in their lives. When we remain in denial, there is no way we can understand how we impact other people when we continue to stress that we didnt ‘intend’ it to be that way. “I didnt mean it THAT way”.

This SNL skit by Queen Latifah actually does some great work in terms of vocalizing daily stress of this kind of denial in the workplace.

I haven’t seen it – nor do I care to, and nor will I watch it “to become informed” and raise the ratings. But i know enough to know that this is such a mess. Who’s idea was this crap? I just cant see the purpose of actually pitting people against one another. It seriously reinforces the thing of.. well race doesn’t really matter, and there really is no historical context for race that informs how we are with one another in present day . . . so its okay to play with it like its meaningless. I’m so irate I could serious start a fire with just the heat coming out of my fingers right now.

Write to these people telling them to get rid of that show. Tell your friends to write. and tell them to turn off their tele’s.

Ummmm.. ok. Am i late on this one? Somebody let me know. I was forwarded this story from a friend – its from People mag rag.

Ahhhh Brad, Angelina and Shiloh. Immortilized in wax at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in New York City. Madame Tussauds will give $1 to UNICEF for every Pitt-Jolie family photo that visitors purchase. Such a beautiful family. (sigh).

but wait… where is son Maddox and daughter Zahara? Arent they part of the Pitt-Jolie crew? Isnt the eldest the heir to the throne? Apparently not in the eyes of Madame Tussaud who has made global who is and who isnt worthy of royal recognition. Who is and who isnt visible. Who is invisible.

Lets just go ahead and reinforce the fact that even royal TRA’s arent part of the family, after all, they arent born into the bloodline. …the hell? ok… send your pissed off letters – here.

Someone needs to check Madame’s curators before I go up there with a freaking blowtorch.